In many ways shell programming is similar to woodworking. A
woodworking project requires a design for the project and its
elements along with the right tools. In shell programming, the
design is provided by the programmer and the tools are
utilities or commands provided by UNIX and the shell. There
are simply commands such as ls and cd. There are also commands
such as awk and sed which are the power tools in UNIX.

The simple commands are easy to learn. You probably know how
to use most of them. The power tools take longer to learn, but
after you have mastered them, you can tackle almost any
problem. This book covers both the simple tools and the power
tools, with the main focus on the most powerful tool in UNIX,
the shell.

The four chapters you will be reading are in the later part of
the book. They provide you with a broad overview of the power
of the shell and how its features can be harnessed to solve
complex problems. The first two chapters show you how to use
variables and functions, which can greatly simplify you
scripts and make them easier to maintain and extend. The third
and fourth chapters cover debugging and shell programming FAQs.
They will help you to find and fix problems in your scripts.

This chapter is from the book

Variables are words that hold a value. The value can be any text
string. The shell enables you to create, assign, and delete variables. Although
the shell manages some variables, it is mostly up to the programmer to manage
variables in shell scripts. By using variables, you can make your scripts flexible
and maintainable.

In this chapter, we will examine the following topics:

Creating variables

Accessing variables

Array variables

Deleting variables

Environment variables

Working with Variables

Two types of variables can be used in shell programming:

Scalar variables

Array variables

Scalar variables can hold only one value at a time. Array variables can hold
multiple values. This section explores the use of both types of variables.

Scalar Variables

Scalar variables are defined as follows:

name=value

Here name is the name of the variable, and value is the value that the
variable should hold. For example,

FRUIT=peach

defines the variable FRUIT and assigns it the value
peach.

NOTE

Scalar variables are often referred to as name-value pairs,
because a variable's name and its value can be thought of as a pair.

Variable Names

The name of a variable can only contain letters (a to z or
A to Z), numbers (0 to 9), and the
underscore character (_). Furthermore, a variable's name can only
start with a letter or an underscore. The following are examples of valid
variable names:

_FRUIT
FRUIT_BASKET
TRUST_NO_1
TWO_TIMES_2

but

2_TIMES_2_EQUALS_4

is not a valid variable name. To make this a valid name, we would need to add
an underscore at the beginning of its name:

_2_TIMES_2

Variable names that start with numbers, such as 1, 2, or
11, are reserved for use by the shell. You can use the value stored in
these variables, but you cannot set the value yourself.

The reason you cannot use other characters such as !,*, or
- is that these characters have a special meaning for the shell. If you
try to create a variable name with one of these special characters, it confuses
the shell. For example, the variable names

FRUIT-BASKET
_2*2
TRUST_NO_1!

are invalid names. The error message generated for the first variable name
will be similar to the following:

$ FRUIT-BASKET=apple
/bin/sh: FRUIT-BASKET=apple: not found.

Variable Values

You can store or assign any value you want in a variable. For example,

FRUIT=peach
FRUIT=2apples
FRUIT=apple+pear+kiwi

A common error with variables is assigning values that contain spaces. For
example, the following assignment

$ FRUIT=apple orange plum

results in this error message:

sh: orange: not found.

Values that have spaces in them need to be quoted. For example, both
of the following are valid assignments:

$ FRUIT="apple orange plum"
$ FRUIT='apple orange plum'

The difference between these two quoting schemes is covered in Chapter 10,
"Quoting."

Accessing Values

You can access the value stored in a variable by prefixing its name with the
dollar sign ($). When the shell sees a $, it performs the
following actions:

Reads the next word to determine the name of the
variable.

Retrieves the value for the variable. If a value isn't found,
the shell uses the empty string "" as the value.

Replaces the $ and the name of the variable with the
value of the variable.

This process, known as variable substitution, is covered in greater
detail in Chapter 9, "Substitution." The following example
demonstrates this process:

$ FRUIT=peach
$ echo $FRUIT
peach

In this example, the shell first determines that the variable FRUIT
has been referenced. Next it looks up the value for FRUIT. Finally the
string $FRUIT is replaced with peach, the value of FRUIT,
which is what the echo command prints.

If you do not use the dollar sign ($), variable substitution is not
performed and the name of the variable is used directly. For example,

$ echo FRUIT
FRUIT

simply prints out FRUIT, not the value of the variable
FRUIT.

The dollar sign ($) is used only when accessing a variable's
value. It should not be used to define a variable or assign a value to a
variable. For example, the assignment

$ $FRUIT=apple

generates the following error message

sh: peach=apple: not found

assuming that the value of FRUIT was peach. If the variable
FRUIT did not have a value, the error would have been

sh: =apple: not found

Array Variables

Arrays are a method for grouping a set of variables together using a
single name. Instead of creating a new name for each variable you need, you can
use a single array variable to stores all the variables.

To understand how arrays work, consider the following example. Say that we
are trying to represent the chapters in this book using a set of scalar
variables. We could choose the following variable names to represent some of the
chapters:

CH01
CH02
CH15
CH07

Each of these variable names has a specific format: the letters CH
followed by the chapter number. This format serves as a way of grouping these
variables together. An array variable formalizes this grouping by using an
array name in conjunction with a number known as an index. The index is
used to locate entries or elements in the array.

NOTE

Arrays are not available in Bourne shell. Arrays first appeared in
Korn Shell, ksh, and were adapted by the Z Shell, zsh. Recent
versions (2.0 and newer) of the Bourne Again Shell, bash, include
support for arrays, but older versions do not. Several Linux distributions still
ship with the older version of bash.

If you are using bash, the following command allows you to determine
its version:

$ echo $BASH_VERSION

If the output starts with the string '1.' as follows:

1.14.7(1)

the version of bash you are using does not support arrays. The
examples in this section will not work 1.x versions of bash.

If the output starts with the string '2.' as follows:

2.03.0(1)-release

the version of bash you are using supports arrays. The examples in
this section will work with 2.0 and newer versions of bash.

Creating Array Variables

The simplest method of creating an array variable is to assign a value to one
of its indices. This is expressed as follows:

name[index]=value

Here name is the name of the array, index is the index of
the item in the array that you want to set, and value is the value you
want to set for that item. In ksh, index must be an integer
between 0 and 1,023. No such restriction is present in bash or
zsh. The only restriction is that index must be an integer. It
cannot be a floating point or decimal number, such as 10.3, or a string, such as
apricot.

As an example, the following commands

$ FRUIT[0]=apple
$ FRUIT[1]=banana
$ FRUIT[2]=orange

set the values of the first three items in the array named FRUIT.
You could do the same thing with scalar variables as follows:

$ FRUIT_0=apple
$ FRUIT_1=banana
$ FRUIT_2=orange

Although this works fine for small numbers of items, the array notation is
much more efficient for large numbers of items. If you have to write a script
using the Bourne shell only, you can use this method for simulating arrays.

In the previous example, the array indices were set in sequence. This is not
necessary. For example, the following command sets the value of the item at
index 10 in the FRUIT array:

$ FRUIT[10]=plum

The shell does not create a bunch of blank array items to fill in the space
between index 2 and index 10; it just keeps track of those
array indices that contain values.

If an array variable with the same name as a scalar variable is defined, the
value of the scalar variable becomes the value of the element of the array at
index 0. For example, if the following commands are executed

$ FRUIT=apple
$ FRUIT[1]=peach

the zeroth element of FRUIT has the value apple. At this
point, any accesses to the scalar variable FRUIT are treated as an
access to the array item FRUIT[0].

The second form of array initialization can be used to set multiple elements
at once. The syntax for this form of initialization differs between ksh
and bash. In ksh, the syntax is as follows:

set A name value1 value2 ... valueN

In bash, the syntax is

name=(value1 ... valueN)

Either style can be used in zsh. Regardless of the style, name is
the name of the array, and value1 to valueN are the values of the items to be
set. When setting multiple elements at once, consecutive array indices,
beginning at 0, are used.

For example the ksh command

$ set A band derri terry mike gene

or the bash command

$ band=(derri terry mike gene)

is equivalent to the following commands:

$ band[0]=derri
$ band[1]=terry
$ band[2]=mike
$ band[3]=gene

TIP

When setting multiple array elements in bash, you can place an
array index before the value:

myarray=([0]=derri [3]=gene [2]=mike [1]=terry)

The array indices don't have to be in order.

Accessing Array Values

An array variable can be accessed as follows:

${name[index]}

Here name is the name of the array, and index is the index
of the desired element. For example, if the array FRUIT was initialized
as in previous examples, the command

$ echo ${FRUIT[2]}

produces the following output:

orange

You can access all the items in an array in one of the following methods:

${name[*]}
${name[@]}

Here name is the name of the array you are interested in. If the
FRUIT array is initialized as in previous examples, the command

$ echo ${FRUIT[*]}

produces the following output:

apple banana orange

If values of any of the array items contain spaces, this form of array access
will not work; you will need to use the second form. The second form quotes all
the array entries so that embedded spaces are preserved. For example, define the
following array item:

FRUIT[3]="passion fruit"

Assuming that FRUIT is defined as in previous examples, accessing
the entire array using the following command

$ echo ${FRUIT[*]}

results in five items, not four:

apple banana orange passion fruit

Commands accessing FRUIT using this form of array access get five
values, with passion and fruit treated as separate items. To
get only four items, you have to use the following form:

$ echo ${FRUIT[@]}

The output from this command looks similar to the previous commands:

apple banana orange passion fruit

but commands will see only four items because the shell quotes the last item,
passion fruit, so it is treated as a single item.

Read-Only Variables

A read-onlyvariable is a variable whose value cannot be
changed afterit is defined. Once a variable is specified as read-only,
there is no way to get rid of it or to modify its value; it and its value
persist until the shell exits.

Variables can be marked read-only using the readonly command.
Consider the following set of commands:

$ FRUIT=kiwi
$ readonly FRUIT
$ echo $FRUIT
kiwi
$ FRUIT=cantaloupe

The last command results in an error message similar to the following:

/bin/sh: FRUIT: This variable is read only.

As you can see, we can read the value of the variable FRUIT, but we
cannot overwrite the value stored in it.

This feature is often used in scripts to make sure that critical variables
are not overwritten accidentally.

In ksh, bash, and zsh, readonly can be
used to mark both array and scalar variables as read-only: